Hacking Habits (Part 2)

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Hacking Habits (Part 2)

In Hacking Habits Part 1, we began a discussion of habitual behaviors and change. In this article, we will pick up where we left off and explore exactly how to design a change of habit for 3 different kinds of habits…

Three Kinds of Habits

With the basic understanding of habit anatomy outlined in Part 1, we can now explore different types of habits and how to change them.

As far as I can tell, there are 3 kinds of habits:

  1. Simple
  2. Complex
  3. Impossible to change

A simple habit is the association of a trigger with a response, reinforced through repetition/and or reward.

A complex habit serves some purpose in your life, and is a challenge to change unless you find a better way to take care of that purpose.

A hard-to-change habit is hyper-generalized (occurs in multiple situations) and is accompanied by strong, emotional states, like a bad temper that goes off in all kinds of situations, or anxiety that’s easily triggered. It’s difficult to find all the triggers and rewards, much less any hidden purpose.

Simple Habits

Simple habits are relatively easy to make and to break. It used to be that our habit was to bring bags home from the grocery store. Now we bring bags with us to the store. That’s a habit change. Increasingly society sees the benefits of recycling, so we are being asked to develop this new habit.  It’s a simple matter of creating a new association to a specific trigger that is part of the sequence of shopping – of connecting one desired behavior to an already-existing behavior, and then repeating it. We do simple habit changes routinely.

Rick is a mid-60 year old patient of mine who realized he needed more movement in his life. He didn’t develop an exercise habit as a kid or as a young man. His father lived to be 91 and, other than walking golf courses, he didn’t exercise. Rick’s father had a lot of leg and back pain in the last decade of his life. Recently, Rick noticed that his muscle strength and flexibility wasn’t what it used to be. He had the thought that his elder years could be as uncomfortable as his dad’s, unless he developed a new habit that did something about it.

So, initially he associated the fear of pain with the action of exercising 3 days a week. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, he would wake up, notice what day it was, feel a bit of that fear, and imagine himself going to exercise at the Y. And over time, the associations and triggers have changed. I suggested he not continue to use fear, which is essentially a kick in the rear, to motivate himself. So we’ve started associating the flexibility and strength he desires for his elder years with heading to the Y. The reward? There are several: How good he feels to get through the workout, the smile on his wife’s face when he gets home, and the freedom of movement he feels are reward enough to reinforce his new habit!

Complex Habits

Complex habits have hidden variables. In other words, we form complex habits in order to fulfill a purpose. Nail biting, for example, may come from a desire for self-soothing. An urge to argue may be triggered by the fear of losing autonomy; perfectionism can be triggered by the subconscious fear of failure to live up to someone else’s standard. The pattern, once established, persists, even if that someone else is no longer in the person’s life.

To change a complex habit, find out what it is doing, and then find a more resourceful way to take care of it that yields the same benefit but in a healthier way.

Ah, but how do you find out the secondary gain? One way is to investigate the upside and downside of changing the habit. Once you have exposed the hidden variables, you can explore creative alternatives that deliver the benefits of the habit while reducing or eliminating the downside of making the change.

It’s not always easy. Some people are at cross-purposes with themselves. You can tell this because they experience parts of themselves in a dissociated way: They describe their thoughts and behavior as if it’s someone else using their mind and body, and maintain the dissociation by disliking those parts. In such a case, it’s helpful to harmonize their parts by exploring the possibility that they learned to do whatever it is for a good reason, and that the part of them giving them a hard time is actually trying to help them.

I did this with an IBS patient. The idea that her despised symptoms were somehow trying to help her was a new approach for her. I said, “Think back to when this all began in your life, and tell me the first thing you think of.” She told me that growing up she was rewarded for compliance, and learned to go along to get along. But after several instances of going along when she didn’t want to, she got mad at herself and then left home. She was tired of playing along and didn’t want to be controlled any more. Some part of her was strong enough, to move her to action. But then she married an abusive partner and her IBS developed during that time. She knew of no alternative but to keep her mouth closed, to go along, and to offer no resistance. I asked, “Why didn’t you leave?” and she said, “I didn’t have the guts to leave him” which I found to be an interesting description that matched the problem. I replied, “Hmm. Maybe you did have the guts to leave him, but didn’t respect that part of yourself?” She said, “That feels so true.” Where did she feel it? In her guts, which she described as relaxing while we were talking.

So we reframed the meaning of the behavior. Reframing means changing your interpretation of something so that it means something else; for our purposes, reframing can make something right instead of wrong before attempting to explore it. It’s a wonderful way to create an internal resonant field, so that instead of struggling with ourselves to change a habit, we can choose to change a habit.

It really isn’t difficult to change the meaning of anything because every interpretation is only 1 out of many. You can reframe the meaning of something by answering the question, “What else could it mean?” In this way, excrement becomes fertilizer becomes flowers. (Whoever reframed poop many have invented gardening!) Not sharing feelings becomes being considerate of others. Overly emotional becomes a willingness to be honest. Obstacles become opportunities. Thinking you’ve heard it before becomes a chance to hear it in a new way. Self-criticism becomes high standards. Anger becomes an expression of vital force. Resistance becomes the defense of something important. Get it?

To help my conflict-averse IBS patient with new and creative alternatives to her old “flight and fight” response, I provided her with referrals to therapists, gave her a constitutional homeopathic remedy, probiotics, adrenal support and high potency fish oil. And that was it!

What we did worked. Her IBS cleared up, and she has since started and sustained a career. Her new habit is to respect herself, and she now knows how to do so without (engaging the fear of) disrespecting others.

Hard-To-Change Habits

There’s a third kind of habit. I call it “hard to change” because there is no simple trigger involved. Instead, there are multiple triggers, so it could almost happen anytime and anywhere. And I call it “hard” because the response to the trigger always includes a super-intense emotional state, i.e., strong feelings.

It is possible to change a hard-to-change habit, just not directly. My suggestion: Quit trying to change those habits. Instead, try to wake up and you’ll snap out of it quicker. Because changing these habits is about bouncing back as quickly as possible from their expression. The quicker you bounce back, the weaker becomes the hold of the habit. Eventually it gets neutralized by conscious awareness and making a new choice.

How to Bounce Back

There are 4 very practical ways to increase bounce back ability.

  1. Mindfulness: This is often talked about as “being Present.” But as I use it, it’s remembering who you are and what matters most to you. When you choose to live on purpose, then life isn’t just temptations or stress or responsibilities. And if you prime your mind, associate what matters most in your life to consistent events, like beginning and ending your day or week. Opening your office door, even sitting in a favourite chair, you can make purposeful pursuit automatic through repetition and intensity, so you can access it more easily after the latest episode of Mission Impossible.
  2. Self-compassion: this usually involves some kind of breathing to break the cycle and self-talk. Fact is, people are doing the best they know how to do, or they would do better already. When we cut ourselves some slack, give ourselves a break, give ourselves permission to make mistakes and have learning experiences, our bounce-back ability is strengthened.
  3. “Want” power: It’s helpful to organize your choices around what you want in any moment, instead of merely reacting to circumstance. Key question to answer here is: What is the best I can bring to that situation?
  4. Willpower: Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t think willpower is about forcing ourselves to do what we don’t want to do. That’s called coercion, and there’s a lot of psychological blowback when we use it. I prefer to think of willpower as the best way to say “no.” when people exercise their willpower, they draw a line dissociating what they will do from what they won’t do. The more we define and respect our own boundaries in life, the easier it becomes to change course, no matter what’s happening in a particular situation or event.

In Conclusion

There’s one last method that you can use to hack a habit, Pygmalion power, the power of positive projection. It turns out that people tend to rise and fall to the level of the expectations projected onto them.

When we’re kids, this is high-octane stuff. My experience shows me that just one positive person in a child’s life- even if it’s only once a week serving as a friend and mentor- can be enough to change a child’s entire story and self-concept. I have witnessed this personally.

You can use this to great effect. Because a final ingredient in changing habits is getting encouragement along the way. The key to suing this power of positive projection is to verbally break associations to undesirable states by saying “that’s not like me,” even if it is like you. And then verbally create positive associations to your desired outcome by saying “You’ve got this. You can do this.” Instead of continuing to talk about your limitations, your excuses, your defenses and explanations for why you are stuck, powerless, helpless and hopeless, I say break the connection to limitation and create an association to possibility. And this is probably as good a time as any for me to tell you, my patients, that I believe in you and your ability to do these things for yourselves. Otherwise I wouldn’t have written this article. You can do it! And I hope you will.